One-third
of employees loathe their jobs, consultants find
By VIRGINIA GALT, WORKPLACE
REPORTER, Globe and Mail
Tuesday, January 28, 2003 –
Print Edition, Page B1
TORONTO -- Hate
your job? You're not alone. New research to be published today by Towers
Perrin management consultants shows that one-third of employees are
profoundly unhappy in their work.
"It's the saddest
feeling you can ever have, when you wake up in the morning and dread the
thought of going to work," says graphic designer Anthony Pimenta, who
felt stifled and unchallenged -- but fairly treated -- in his previous
position with one of Canada's major banks.
It was the monotony
that drove Melissa Alvares to flee her previous job at a market research
firm, where she spent most of her time closeted in a room going through
stacks of forms, checking for missing postal codes.
Employees were
under constant pressure to process the forms faster and faster. "It was
like a weird boot camp," said Ms. Alvares, who has a combined business
and science degree from the University of Waterloo and who now works,
happily, as a marketing co-ordinator with Toronto-based Softchoice
Corp.
For communications
specialist Stacie Smith, it was the total lack of control over her own
time that led her to quit a Toronto public relations agency and set up
her own shop.
The pay was good,
the work was interesting, "but I couldn't even have lunch, unless I had
it at my desk," Ms. Smith said in an interview yesterday. "I couldn't
leave at six o'clock to watch my nephew play hockey."
The Towers Perrin
study found that most people have strong feelings about their jobs --
"employees are not apathetic or indifferent, as many suppose" -- and
these emotions are predominantly negative.
More than half of
1,100 employees polled in Canada and the United States reported negative
feelings about their jobs, and one-third of employees in that sample
group described their feelings as "intensely
negative."
Towers Perrin
suggests that the mood of employees has worsened as a result of a decade
of downsizings.
They "have never
worked as hard or as fast," said one of the firm's representatives in
Toronto yesterday. Towers Perrin said in its report that "people are
burned out -- doing as much or more work with fewer resources and less
support."
The researchers
found that senior managers have an accurate sense of the current mood of
the work force, "but they misjudge some of the root causes," Bruce Near,
managing director of Towers Perrin in Canada, said in an interview
yesterday.
Employees cited
boredom, overwork, concern about their future, and a lack of support and
recognition from their bosses as key reasons for their
unhappiness.
"Where pay was an
issue, it was largely about perceived unfairness, specifically
insufficient pay for the level of effort or results provided, rather
than absolute pay levels," Towers Perrin reported in its study, Working
Today: Exploring Employees' Emotional Connections to Their
Jobs.
"Among our
discontented group, 28 per cent are actively looking for a new job or
planning to leave their company," the report said. "Equally disturbing,
fully a quarter of these individuals plan to remain with their current
employer -- suggesting a company could have a segment of disaffected
workers just 'hanging on' to their jobs and, potentially, adversely
affecting others with their negative attitudes."
Mr. Near said many
employees are sticking with their jobs in the current economic
environment. But as the climate improves, many of the disaffected will
move on.
For every 1,000
employees in any large organization, he said, roughly 600 are either
actively or passively looking for other work.
He said the survey,
conducted in partnership with a U.S. firm, Gang & Gang, found no
difference in attitudes between Canadian and U.S.
employees.
And, after a spate
of corporate scandals, the researchers were surprised to discover that
the question of whether employees trusted their senior executives had
less impact on their level of job satisfaction than other factors, Mr.
Near said.
The researchers
also found "a statistically significant relationship" between employee
satisfaction and strong financial results, said Mr. Near, who added that
employees who feel connected to, and competent in, their work perform
better.
Ms. Alvares said
she is thriving in her new job, where she helps develop marketing
programs for computer product vendors. She said she doesn't mind hard
work and long hours, if the work is challenging.
Ms. Smith, who has
hung out her shingle as Smith Communications, still puts in long days --
but she gets to choose her own clients and set her own hours. She can
now take a break for lunch, walk the dog or watch her nephew's hockey
games. She is expecting her first child in April.
Mr. Pimenta was
given the option of moving into a branch-banking role or taking a buyout
when his position as a graphic designer was eliminated. He opted for the
buyout, took career counselling, and now operates his own business,
Hibryd Productions, which specializes in Web design, animation,
graphics, and film and video production.
It was not the
bank's fault that he felt bored and out of place, Mr. Pimenta said in an
interview. But he felt that his creativity was undervalued -- "They'd
get more excited about someone developing a new form, a new withdrawal
slip."
Now, working for
himself after 15 years in banking, Mr. Pimenta says he cannot wait to
get out of bed in the morning to develop his new business. "It's beyond
fun, it's so cool."
The Towers Perrin
report said employers have a lot to gain by harnessing this passion in
their current work forces.
"Gaining this
discretionary effort from employees may be the last remaining source of
increased productivity, now that so many companies have already captured
the efficiencies of technology and streamlined work processes," the
report said.
